


Wake

by Demmora



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Comfort, Death, Grief, I'm working through some personal shit, Loss, not graphic, tw: mention of child death, you'll have to forgive me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-13
Updated: 2016-10-13
Packaged: 2018-08-22 04:49:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8273540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Demmora/pseuds/Demmora
Summary: "How can you say that?" Susan demanded, "How can you look at me and tell me that when you know what I knew and felt what I felt..." BECAUSE IT IS THE TRUTH. HOPE IS THE SPARK OF LIVING ESSENCE THAT LOOKS UNTO THE VOID AND BELIEVES TOMORROW WILL BE BETTER. IT IS THE STUFF ALL LIVING CREATURES ARE MADE OF, IN DEFIANCE OF ALL UNIVERSAL EVIDENCE...THERE IS HOPE...





	

**Author's Note:**

> I got a fic request a while back for "anything with Susan". I dare say what you had in mind was something a little more cheery, and I promise you I am working on something else too. Just...it's been a Difficult Time, recently, and I need Death to be kind. I think we all need that sometimes.

To say that Biers served coffee, was akin to admitting that somewhere underneath all the primordial ooze, the River Ankh could be considered water.

Susan watched as Igor fought with the controls, twisting and pulling the various different knobs. Steam released from the top of the machine in a fairly passable imitation of a banshee. After a few alarming moments of shuddering and groaning from the innards of the machine, a steady dribble of coffee emerged from the spout. Igor managed to get nearly almost all of it into the tall paper cups made popular by rail commute.

"Cream of thugar, Mith Thuthan?"

"Both in mine, thank you Igor."

"What about the other?"

"Oh, no." Susan said, leaning against the side of the bar and managing to avoid the sticky top by some subtle shifts of reality about her person. It made her teeth tingle, but it was better than letting her sleeve dip into who knew what. Or _whom_ , as the case may be. It was often a little hard to tell in Biers. "He'll take his black."

Coffee in hand, she retreated to a quiet booth out of the way. It wasn't that she _didn't_ want to be seen exactly, it was just well...even Biers had it's limits. Not to mention a clientele that was used to seeing things other people's brains refused to process out of sheer survival instinct.

Ensconced in her corner, Susan let her gaze roam, politely detached. When she caught the eye of Captain Angua—still in uniform but with her helmet set down on the table—she nodded, the werewolf inclining her head in return before staring bleary eyed into her own coffee like the promise of salvation. Susan couldn't help but notice the spoon was standing upright in her coffee.

The door opened, allowing a blustery winter wind to sweep around the room, before it slammed shut. No one had come in and no one had left. Around her the air shifted, suddenly seeming far more real than actual reality. It always did.

"Hello, Grandfather," Susan said, without turning her head.

There was the very distinct and audible sound of a scythe being leant against the side of the booth. **SUSAN.**

Susan turned, watching as her grandfather lowered himself into the booth.Silence hung. It was simultaneously an eternity and over in an instant.

**YOU LOOK...WELL**

"Thank you," there was an audible click of bone as he moved, skeletal fingers reaching for the coffee cup which had somehow turned even blacker in the time it had been sitting on the table. "You look the same."

**THANK YOU**

"Work keeping you...busy?"

 **THERE WAS A FREAK SHIPWRECK IN** **PSEUDOPOLIS THIS MORNING.**

Susan frowned, "Pseudopolis is grassland..."

**I DID SAY FREAK.**

Susan considered this, then nodded. It didn't pay to dwell too long on the quirks of realistic probability on the Discworld. Not when magical radiation seeped out of the ground and the very air like treacle from an overstuffed tart.

Another silence ensued, and Susan realized it was her turn to break it. "How's Albert?"

**FINE. HE SENDS HIS REGARDS.**

"Really?"

There was a pause. **NOT VERBALLY, PERHAPS. BUT HEAVILY IMPLIED.**

Susan hummed, and took a sip of her coffee. It was like drinking sweetened tar. She picked up the spoon, hoping to stir in some of the milk that was floating on the top. She was pleasantly surprised when the spoon didn't immediately dissolve. "I'm back at work." she said, purely for something to say.

**YES, I KNOW.**

"I do wish you wouldn't do that."

**SORRY.**

She sighed, then braced herself. "I didn't see you there...when...when they found him..."

Death paused, lifting the paper cup to the general vicinity of his face. When he set it down the contents were slightly depleted. **HE HAD...MOVED ON, QUITE A WHILE BEFORE THEN. AND I DID NOT THINK YOU WOULD WISH TO SEE ME.**

Moved on. Susan wanted to roll her eyes. _Moved on._ How quaintly put for the person carrying the scythe. The scythe Susan herself had wielded more than once, the scythe Susan knew the weight of, knew the pull of the swing and the slight resistance as steel met ethereal matter and separated the soul from the body once and for all. Moved on indeed. As though he needed to sugar coat such words between them, they who knew no justice, only duty. They who saw the doors and endless sand and...and...

The sob caught her by surprise. It was a sharp visceral thing that lodged in her throat like broken glass, refusing to be swallowed down. She clamped her hand over her mouth, striving to halt any further outburst, but all that did was muffle it into something broken and desolate. Somehow that was worse.

Time slowed, and stopped.

"I tried," Susan said, wiping furiously at her eyes with the back of her sleeve, vaguely aware that her hair had fallen out of its bun and was strewn around her shoulders in limp despair. "When his mother came to the school and asked if I'd seen him...and the Watch were there...I tried, Grandfather, I tried so hard to find him. But when I realized I couldn't..."

Another sob choked the words in her throat.

"I knew, I knew straight away, but I had to carry on looking because what else could we do..." she swiped at her eyes again, "and his mother kept looking at me with such terrible pointless hope..."

**HOPE IS THE LAST BASTION AGAINST THE DESPAIR OF ETERNAL DARKNESS...IT IS SOMETIMES KIND, IT IS SOMETIMES NOT. BUT IT IS NEVER POINTLESS.**

"How can you say that?" Susan demanded, "How can you look at me and tell me that when you know what I knew and felt what I felt..."

**BECAUSE IT IS THE TRUTH. HOPE IS THE SPARK OF LIVING ESSENCE THAT LOOKS UNTO THE VOID AND BELIEVES TOMORROW WILL BE BETTER. IT IS THE STUFF ALL LIVING CREATURES ARE MADE OF, IN DEFIANCE OF ALL UNIVERSAL EVIDENCE...THERE IS HOPE...**

"But he still died..." Susan breathed around another sob, "He still died and his mother..."

**THERE WAS NOTHING YOU COULD HAVE DONE. IT WAS OVER IN AN INSTANT. HE DID NOT SUFFER.**

_"_ He was frightened of the dark." Susan said, closing her eyes against the frozen world, envisioning endless starless night, "He was the only one I couldn't...we couldn't even get him from one end to the corridor to the other if the candles weren't lit. You had to hold his hand to get him past the threshold..."

**I KNOW.**

The implication of those two syllables should have dropped like an anvil. But instead is settled around her, reassuring and comforting in its weight.

"Thank you." She wasn't sure what she intended that for. For the words that went unsaid, or that he'd come to her when she'd called.

 **I ALWAYS GO WHERE I AM NEEDED,** Death reached out and laid gentle fingers on her arm. Susan smiled weakly, and clasped a hand over his.

"I know."

 **YES,** Death intoned, **YOU DO.**

Time sped up again.

Angua looked up at the sound of the sob, looking for the injured creature that had made it. There was no one there though, just herself and Igor and—she looked round when the door opened and closed and no one entered or exited—two empty coffee cups in the booth opposite.

 


End file.
